Florida Coast to Coast Adventure Race
Race Report from Team Nature Calls
Manny / 28.05.2008
Another year and another excellent and tough C2C race is down in the books. This was my 5th C2C in a row, and even tough what you are about to read will make most people wonder why anyone in their right mind would put themselves through this, I am pretty sure I will be doing many, many more.This year I was back racing with my great friends Jason Amadori, Jim Gabbert, and Lori Gabbert. I don't even know if calling them friends is fair, because in reality, they are like family. As most of you know, we are Team Nature Calls. And our awesome support crew was my girl Alli, Jason's wife (and the Gabbert's daughter) Erica, and Jim and Lori's other kid's, Ashley, Matt, and a friend of the family, Maggie. Once again, they were amazing out there for us.
Pre Race
I won't bore you with all the pre-race details. We got the maps on Thursday night and spent several hours plotting all the coordinates and figuring out what route we would take. But I will bore you with one important detail. Monday morning I woke up with a scratchy throat. I was hoping it was nothing. Tuesday it was a little worse, and by Tuesday night it totally hurt. I called in sick to work on Wednesday because I wanted to stay home and try to take care of whatever it was that I may be coming down with. it didn't help. Thursday I felt no better. And wouldn't you know it, that it was when we woke up Friday morning (race start) that I had a full blown cold on my hands. I woke up feeling like total garbage, just in time to start a brutal 72-hour race. Perfect. But what could I do right? As Jason has taught me, the race must go on.
The Race Start - Run / Paddle
The race started at 6:00am on Friday morning in Cocoa Beach. We had a quick 5 mile run, south on the beach, to a boat ramp where we would pick up our kayaks. The run was easy, but right away we realized how hot the race would be. Even at 6:00am it was humid as all hell out there. We were drenched in sweat within minutes.
I just about 1 hour we reached the boat ramp, quickly jumped in our kayaks, and headed north on the Banana River for a ~17 mile paddle. We paddled north to a checkpoint at the bridge at 520. Then continued north, under 528, and then headed east on a canal to the Intracoastal and back south to 520, where our second transition area, TA2, was located. The paddle was fairly easy, but then again, it was the start of the race and we were all fresh and full of energy.
The Cold
So far my cold was mainly just giving me a really bad cough. My throat hurt pretty bad, and I was coughing a lot. But other than that I felt alright. That wouldn't last long.
The Bike (1)
After we got the maps on Thursday night we knew there was going to be a lot of biking on this race. And as cycling is our strongest point, we liked it. In the end we ended up with about 190 miles of total mountain biking for the race.
At TA2 we transitioned from paddle to bike. it was a fairly fast TA for us. In and out in about 20 minutes. We were the 4th team to make it to the TA, but the first one to leave.See All Event Posts
